


For Blessing

by xraelynn



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Cancer Arc, Jewish Fox Mulder, Mulder is missing, New York City, Post-Episode: s05e04 Detour, Pregnant Dana Scully, Rosh HaShana | Jewish New Year, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 08, Yom Kippur | Atonement Day, matzoh balls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-23 23:53:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13798995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xraelynn/pseuds/xraelynn
Summary: "Mulder has always been impossible to scrutinize with any real hope of discovery, but since her illness he has lapsed into total mystery, at times impossibly remorseful and at others unusually tender."Early season 5 and early season 8, Scully finds herself in New York City in the fall.





	For Blessing

**Author's Note:**

> "Zichrona livracha [May their memory be for blessing]." -Jewish words of mourning

Six days after their unscheduled detour in Florida, Scully finds herself in New York City with a head cold, undecided as to whether it's her sinuses or her partner that's causing her headache.

Mulder has been exhausting these past few days, first chattering nonstop about the potential enormity of their Florida discovery, then hovering guiltily when it becomes apparent that their night in the damp forest has triggered a minor cold. It is so like Mulder, Scully thinks with a mixture of fondness and weariness, remembering that night in the woods when she had allowed herself to speak honestly to her partner about dying and he had responded with a crack about the Ice Capades. Mulder has always been impossible to scrutinize with any real hope of discovery, but since her illness he has lapsed into total mystery, at times impossibly remorseful and at others unusually tender.

Scully knows for a fact that there is a team seminar taking place this very moment in Honolulu, Hawaii, but there is only so far Skinner's generosity and guilt following the remission of her cancer has been able to take them.

Mulder, for his part, is positively exuberant about their trip to the city, although Scully suspects that Skinner's rather descriptive threats about the consequences of missing another seminar play a significant role in her partner's exaggeratedly good humor.

As they spill out of the Lincoln Tunnel into the crush of midtown traffic, Mulder unexpectedly divulges a childhood memory involving an overnight class trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the heaving vastness of the city that had left him in awe.

"There's something single-minded about Manhattan," he observes, too preoccupied with jockeying for position in a sea of trucks and taxis to notice Scully's wry sidelong glance; single-mindedness, she observes, is a trait with which she has become intimately familiar.

In this moment, for a thousand reasons she cannot explain, Scully feels a startling surge of closeness to her partner, impulsively grateful for the small personal revelation that is not a painful relic from Mulder's past.

Now, Scully sits in her hotel room in midtown Manhattan, dutifully swallowing jelly-colored capsules with orange juice and sourly contemplating the irony: A month ago her concerns had been about dying with dignity, about the trauma of gushing nosebleeds and skull-shattering migraines, and now she finds herself preoccupied with rough tissues and snot, with whether the concealer she once used to mask the deep bruises under her eyes will prove as effective on the raw, reddened skin around her nose.

She is startled out of her reverie by a knock on the door. She knows before she stretches up on tiptoes to peer through the peephole that it is Mulder; there is something jaunty in the sound of his knock that complements his mood on this trip.

"The afternoon seminar's been canceled," he announces without preamble, looking pleased with himself as if he is the one responsible. For a moment Scully fears the worst, as if she is a mother who has just been called into the principal's office.

"Mulder," Scully responds with mock severity, "you didn't break their slide projector, did you?"

He merely grins. Scully waits expectantly and after a beat Mulder shakes his head, enjoying her sigh of relief.

"Minor flood in the conference room. Come on, I'll take you to lunch." He gives his a lopsided smile. "Starve a fever, feed a cold, right?"

Her reply is a rapid-fire series of sneezes, the last one muffled into a handkerchief Mulder has thrust under her nose. Distantly Scully wonders whether Mulder has purchased stock in handkerchiefs or has merely taken to buying them in bulk; God knows all those cloths soaked through with her blood can't be cleaned in the laundry. She blows her nose, slightly embarrassed — cancerous nosebleeds are one thing, phlegm is quite another — and observes Mulder inspecting her with concern.

"You okay, Scully?" he says, in that voice she knows is masking the thousand wild alarms that have just sprung up behind his eyes.

"I'm fine, Mulder," she says patiently, regretting it when Mulder recoils, something darkening in his face. She keeps neglecting to remind herself of the rewritten rules of her remission: "I'm fine" is no longer code for "I'm dying," and Mulder's interest in her health is no longer a brutal reminder of her impending demise.

Scully would prefer to use their free afternoon to soak in a bath and stock up on tissues, but after their uncomfortable exchange, she cannot deny Mulder's invitation. Something in his eyes haunts her as they walk out the door; she knows what he is seeing when he looks at her, and a thousand tumor-free brain scans aren't enough to make the images go away.

* * *

There are dozens of restaurants within blocks of their hotel, but Mulder heads straight for the nearest subway. After being treated to a sermon on the platform that vaguely reminds her of childhood Mass in San Diego, Scully finds herself crushed between a young couple transporting a large dresser and a rowdy group of teenagers trading insults with each other. Above her, a rainbow-colored sign with a round-faced man on it encourages her to visit the dermatology office of Dr. Zizmor to clear her embarrassing acne. Across the car, lounging against a pole as if he rides the subway every day of his life, Mulder grins at her.

"This is much more authentic than a taxi," he assures her as the train skids to a stop and the sound of pounding drums floods into the car when the doors open. Her ears ringing, she fixes him with a withering stare.

"As long as it was authentic," she says dryly.

They emerge into the crisp fall air on Houston Street, and Scully blinks as Mulder purposefully leads her to a large windowfront proclaiming KATZ'S DELICATESSEN — SINCE 1888.

"It's a deli," she says uncomprehendingly. Mulder only shakes his head as if he has anticipated her inadequately enthusiastic reaction.

"You sit," he says. "I'll take care of the food."

She considers protesting — in their four years together she has never willingly let Mulder choose her meal — but thinks the better of it when she sneezes on one of the customers waiting in the long line. Carefully she makes her way through the crowd to a table near the back of the restaurant, while behind the counter orders for Dr. Brown's root beer and beef tongue with a side of kugel fly rapid-fire through the air.

When Mulder finally joins her, he is balancing a tray of enormous sandwiches and a bowl of steaming soup he triumphantly places in front of her. In the middle of it is a massive lump, the size of a baseball, soft-looking and vaguely yellowish in color.

"For your cold," Mulder explains. Scully glances from his face to the soup and experimentally pokes at the object with her spoon.

"What is this, Mulder?"

Mulder looks momentarily surprised, then fixes her with an expression so exaggeratedly wounded that Scully knows she is in for a ribbing.

"That's a matzoh ball, Scully. You've never had a matzoh ball?"

She eyes them both skeptically, first the spongy ball and then Mulder. "I've been deprived, I take it?" she observes wryly.

He shakes his head mournfully. "You have no idea," he says, his expression almost wistful. "My grandmother used to make them."

She sets her spoon down in surprise; it is the first time Mulder has ever mentioned a family member apart from what Scully has privately begun to think of as the unholy Mulder trinity: the abusive father, the distant mother, the missing sister. All three have had an immeasurable impact on Mulder's psyche, and Scully wonders what a grandmother might have added to the volatile mix.

"She grew up around here," he continues. "On the Lower East Side. My mother's mother. She and my father never liked each other." He takes a large bite of his sandwich.

"And this time of year," he finishes, "she made matzoh balls."

Scully scoops a tiny bite of the matzoh ball onto her spoon and takes a cautious nibble. Fluffy and warm, it dissolves on her tongue.

"This time of year?" she asks.

"It's Yom Kippur, Scully," he says. "The Day of Atonement." He pauses and Scully watches something in his eyes click into place, like a tape recorder switching on as he prepares to recite an ancient memory.

"This is the Day of Judgment," he quotes, his face set in concentration, "for even the hosts of heaven are judged, as all who dwell on Earth stand arrayed before You. Who shall live and who shall die, who shall see ripe age and who shall not, who shall perish by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by beast."

Scully shudders. Who by cancer and who by his own hand, she thinks involuntarily.

"What do you have to atone for, Mulder?" she asks softly. The words are out of her mouth before she can stop herself, and Mulder flinches almost audibly as though she has slapped him. He sets his can down on the table with such force that it sloshes over, soaking his hand with fizzing soda.

"I'm sorry," Scully amends, stricken, as she hastily reaches for a napkin. "I didn't mean..."

Mulder looks at her, hard, his chair scraping back against the floor. "You have every right to," he says darkly. "There aren't enough prayers in the world to atone for my sins."

Scully knows that to remain silent in response is tantamount to acquiescence, but any denial she gives will be utterly futile.

"You are not responsible for what happened to me," she says finally.

"And the men who are?" he asks sharply.

She swallows a sigh; this is not a conversation she expected to have this week — not in New York - perhaps not ever — certainly not over sour pickles and pastrami.

"They have their own sins to atone for," she says.

Mulder studies her for so long that Scully looks away, uncomfortable, wondering if for the rest of her life Mulder will see her as a ghost, the tumor pulsating in her brain as though he can see it if he looks closely enough.

They finish eating in silence. As they get up from the table, Mulder reaches to touch her — maybe to brush his fingers against her shoulder as he is so accustomed to doing, she thinks, maybe just to reassure himself that she is real — and abruptly pulls his hand back, reaching instead for her empty bowl. Scully takes a deep breath.

"Thank you," she says, looking up at him. "For the matzoh ball."

For a moment his expression is grim, lost, and Scully is reminded that by all rights she should not be here, should not be eating matzoh balls or attending team seminars or anything at all. Then he smiles, grateful.

"It isn't New York without matzoh balls," he says.

They take a cab back to the hotel. The next morning, Scully awakens to find her sinuses almost cleared, her throat less scratchy; according to Mulder, the healing powers of the matzoh ball soup have worked wonders. Privately, Scully prefers to think of it as a different kind of rebirth; without the specter of illness lurking around her, she becomes a reminder that they are not in mourning. Perhaps, she thinks, they have both atoned for their sins.

* * *

These are the things Scully remembers when she finds herself in New York again, this time swallowing prenatal vitamins instead of cold capsules and with John Doggett by her side instead of Mulder. But Mulder _is_ with her, she reminds herself, for lately she has been seeing Mulder everywhere — in the grocery store, on the firing range; everywhere.

During idle moments she finds herself wondering how Mulder would react to her burgeoning stomach, picturing him reaching out for her belly with hesitant longing and buying her gifts of tiny Yankees uniforms.

Skinner and Doggett, stone-faced, don't behave like this at all, and for that Scully is profoundly grateful.

They are in New York, ostensibly, to investigate a murder with ritualistic overtones, but Scully knows that her heart is not in the case. Doggett tackles the evidence seriously, with none of Mulder's gallows humor and gusto, and Scully misses the small exhilaration of disagreement until she admits to herself that what she really misses is Mulder.

Late in the afternoon, while Doggett and a local police officer re-interview their potential witnesses, Scully walks through the teeming streets and remembers Mulder's account of his childhood trip to the Upper East Side, when the city had awed rather than overwhelmed him.

These days, everything is overwhelming to Scully, and sometimes she wonders whether the second heart beating within her belongs to her child or to Mulder.

The autumn air is just starting to feel chilly, and Scully hugs her arms to her stomach. It had been spring when Mulder went to Bellefleur and never returned; the warm whisper of May had melted into a hot, sticky summer, and the brisk fall air feels like a betrayal of Mulder's memory, an ominous signal that the seasons have changed without him. She remembers the way Mulder looked at her that fall, his eyes holding hers as if he feared she might yet disappear. She wonders whether she will look at him the same way, when he returns to her.

Scully has never allowed himself to wonder what it had been like for Mulder during the months when she was missing, but she remembers Melissa's surprise after Mulder visited her in the hospital, and her grave evaluation of the dark aura she claimed to have seen lifted from him like a shroud. Scully wonders what color aura she is projecting now into the October sky.

She stops walking suddenly; it is exhausting, these thoughts of Mulder surrounding her all the time like a second skin. She looks up and sees a man standing in the doorway of a building smiling at her encouragingly.

 _"Shana tovah_ ," he says.

Scully is momentarily thrown. "Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry," he replies politely. "It means 'happy new year.' I thought you were on your way into the service."

For the first time Scully notices the sign in front of the building: YOM KIPPU MEMO IAL SE VICE 5:00 PM. The missing letters strike her as strangely sad, and the man follows her gaze and gives her an apologetic smile.

"Guess they ran out of Rs," he says.

She hesitates, willing herself to keep walking, but she is transfixed by the letters as Mulder's words crash like cymbals in her brain.

The Day of Atonement, she thinks, wondering whom she can possibly ask for forgiveness.

"Memorial for what?" she asks finally.

"It's called a Yizkor service," he replies. "On the holiest day of the year, Jews gather to mourn the loved ones they have lost and recite Kaddish over their memory."

Unexpectedly, embarrassingly, Scully feels tears flood her eyes, and the man looks suddenly stricken.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to upset you."

She shakes her head. "No, it's not you," she says. "I...I recently lost someone...someone close to me, and..." She trails off looks away. Across the street, a vendor is loading a small mountain of sauerkraut onto a hot dog with one hand and making change with the other.

"I don't even know why I'm telling you this," she murmurs.

He looks at her kindly.

"That's all right," he says.

"I..." She hesitates. "I was under the impression that the holiday was about atoning for one's sins."

He nods. "The dead need forgiveness, too," he says gently. 

Scully takes a step back. She has mourned for so much in the past seven years; she cannot bring herself to mourn for Mulder, too.

The man notices her reluctance and shakes his head hastily. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to convert you. I just thought...you said you had lost someone recently," he explains, "and I thought I...might help bring you some closure."

In her mind she sees a flash of screaming light and the headstone carved with Mulder's name: 1961-2000. She swallows thickly, unwilling to explain to a stranger that the person she has lost is not dead, that closure is impossible, that at night she buries her face in Mulder's dress shirt as if she is afraid she will forget to dream about him.

"I'm not in mourning," she says softly.

Her heart aches as she walks away, and she wishes it were true.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally written and posted in 2006. 
> 
> Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgment (also known as the Day of Atonement), take place ten days apart in September or October (depending on the Jewish calendar), a period of time that is known collectively as the "High Holidays" and the "Days of Awe." The passage Mulder quotes comes from an English translation of the U'n'taneh Tokef prayer. 
> 
> The Mourner's Kaddish, or the mourner's prayer, is traditionally recited on Yom Kippur by those who have lost a parent.
> 
> Katz's Delicatessen on 2nd and Houston (Mulder and Scully took the F train) is where Meg Ryan fakes the orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. 
> 
> Anyone who has ever been a regular rider of the New York subway will recognize Dr. Zizmor the dermatologist. More and more subway cars are being bought up by huge corporations who plaster the entire car with the same ad, so I consider seeing Dr. Zizmor on the subway these days a real treat, like running into an old friend.


End file.
